You don't understand a bad job market until you're in it

I felt that my grasp of economics wasn't good enough, so I read articles, took econ class, talked to people, and did general research. I learned all about the history of panics, depressions, boom and bust cycles, laissez faire, Keynesian economics, Reaganomics, and more. I read op-eds blaming the Tea Party movement on the lack of jobs. I was no expert, but I knew about economics and the job market and something of how it all worked.

And then I tried to get a job for the summer. An internship, even. Something to get me on a schedule and out of the house. Make a tiny bit of money. Something to do- anything. My standards dropped lower and lower. I wrote query letters and heard nothing. Went to interviews where I was bluntly told that all the jobs had been filled but they could try to find me a little work to do. Went to interviews where they seemed to like me and never got back to me again.

Yes, I knew something before about economics and the job market. But now I feel what a bad job market means, for me and for my friends and individual citizens.

Testing your knowledge...?

Finals are boring me. I have overestimated my powers of concentration. That is all. There is only so long the human brain can remain focused on something that never really interested all that much in the first place. But it will all turn out okay in the end, I know, its just that the process is so dreadful. There has to be a better way of doing this. There has to.

I overheard someone in the dining hall tonight saying, "But it all turns out all right in the end, doesn't it? I mean, have you actually ever failed a class?"

No comment.

Good night to all (who are not taking finals) and to all a good night.

Dawn of the Vermin

This is just a quick post about a phenomenon I've noticed lately. After a relatively calm winter and early spring, the last two weeks have been absolutely infested. I've seen and heard about cases of cockroaches (two dead ones in the hall) mice, spiders, giant flying unidentified buggy-thing, and suchlike. Why all at once? What is the message in all this? What is the frequency of so-called little visitors trying to tell us?

Perhaps I should clean my room...

I Miss Fiction

I was reading scholarly article after lengthy dissertation after weighty thesis after abstract paper and then I paused and I realized something...

I miss sinking into a good book. Into a world, where yes, you are using your brain, but you aren't so painfully aware of it. Where you care about the characters and thus learn truths about the world through human interaction rather than carefully crafted theorizing in the abstract realm. Where the story is paramount, but not all there is to find, either. With lessons subtle, or as running threads, rather than the main idea. Real life, rather than a list of historical events; even if not all the particular events in the story happened in real life, they are nonetheless true in a certain way, because they resonate with what you know and how you think about the world.

I like my classes, I like learning how to think in academia, but it's been much too long since I read a good fictional novel. I have to find something soon- maybe I'll head over to the library next week...

Anonymous on the Internet

Because there's nothing like a thoughtful article about anonymity on the Internet: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/mf_minerva/all/1

The article tells the story of the South Korean blogger Minerva, and how he moved from anonymity and influence to notoriety and a court trial. Park Dae-Sung became tremendously influential in Korea as the financial markets plummeted, and his anonymous predictions, which he based on careful study of the markets, turned out accurate at important moments. Despite flying rumors before the revelation, he turned out to be nobody particularly qualified; no economist, just a student, and not a reformed greedy financier as he'd presented himself.

Orson Scott Card himself, on his web site, noticed the resemblance of the Minerva case to his book Ender's Game, where Val and Peter become Locke and Demosthenes, using the anonymous names' freedom to pretend to more gravity and influence than they actually had. Sometimes doing that attracts attention in itself, as the anonymous writer can come across as someone powerful who wanted to speak the truth without compromising an established reputation.

Minerva was uncovered in the end, though, in a way that also uncovered serious flaws in the system of South Korean law and government, if the Wired article is accurate in its judgements (something I don't really know much about so I can't be sure). Internet and privacy, and whether it is the government's job to keep the Internet clean and tidy for its citizens, is of course a whole other debate, worthy of discussion but not for this post. But the article is an excellent read, with its insights into the economic crisis, South Korean society, the nature of anonymity on the Internets, and the interaction of opinions with the sources that form them.

Too much writing advice?

When I first started to realize that a lot of the authors I liked had web sites, I found myself reading a lot of writing advice. Every author seemed to have something to say- from Sherwood Smith to Shannon Hale and Diana Wynne Jones- and each one had their own distinct approach, often contradicting each other.

There were just so many of them! Covering all approaches- from the authors with a story arc that appears in their head and forces them to write it down, to the ones who make it up as they go along (Ellen Raskin of Westing Game fame said she got too bored to write unless the ending was a surprise to her, too), to the ones who outline and plan and brainstorm their way into an organized plot.

So does all this contradiction mean that reading about how to write is a waste of time? Maybe there is no right way. Maybe it's all a matter of personal style.

Maybe so. But I'd like to venture an idea that I've come to, after reading a lot of articles proffering knowledge about writing and the publishing industry. It is worth doing your research, and knowing all the rules, even if lots of authors do things differently. Sort of like grammar- you have to learn proper English, really know it well- and only then can you start playing around with it.

No one says ee cummings was an illiterate ignoramus, not if they know what they're talking about, despite the fact that he breaks all the rules of normative English. If a sixth grader tried handing in work following ee cummings's rules of grammar, he'd get an F, and that wouldn't be unfair, despite how it might seem to the sixth grader. It's because you have to understand what you're doing, and break the rules only when it means something different because you did it.

I'm not trying to say the difference is just in your intent and understanding of what you're doing, because I do also think there is a recognizable difference in the objective quality of your work. To readers - your target audience - who really do know the rules, see what you've accomplished as a work of art, instead of just a lazy attempt to get out of learning the rules, and cheat the system (and failing to actually produce anything worthwhile, in pretty much every case).

What does this mean in terms of writing style- what should you do?

You should learn all the rules. Understand their sources and the effect on your writing when you follow them. Explore all their highways and byways, good or bad or contradictory as may be.

Then: let all that advice wash over you and drift away. You're hopefully now a better writer, but once you've studied and practiced long enough, it's time to stop worrying about emulating the styles of others and figure out what works best for you.

Bibelot & other words; No I don't spend too much time online?

Dictionary.com's word of the day is bibelot! You heard it here first! (Well, probably.) Now go look up anfractuously. Just because you know defenestration and antidisestablishmentarianism doesn't mean you have to pretend you know them all.

In other news, I am having way too much fun on Twitter. But I have lots of reading for class...and I need to shop for textbooks online. So perhaps I should get off Twitter, off this blog, perhaps even- gasp- off the computer entirely! A girl can dream, can't she?

After the recent report saying that kids these days (I say that like I'm old or something) spend more hours using media than there are actually hours in the day (waking hours anyway) then perhaps I should be more careful. One could metaphorically say it like this:

[Twitter/ Facebook/ blogs/ insert preferred social media of choice] is a drug. You start saying you'll only use it a little bit and then suddenly you find yourself saying, I can quit whenever I want. Only you don't. And slowly it consumes your normal life, until your social life is semi-dependent on it and you just can't stop...

Scary stuff, eh? But that won't stop anyone from continuing, will it Let alone me and I said it! I make excuses of why I need it. We all do. But sometimes I have to wonder- how would my life be different if all this stuff didn't exist? Or if I had never gotten started using it?

A Mouse's Schedule

A mentsch tracht und der Eibeshter lacht. Man plans and God laughs. An apt expression for what happened to me this morning. Not that I can spell in German or Yiddish or whatever language that is. (My friend, E, used to say it a lot.) Or, "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley," if you prefer. (I always liked that Robert Burns poem- can do part of it by heart in fact.)

So what's the laughing and the mice got to do with my first day of classes this semester? My schedule- my busy plan- it was full. But I liked it and was excited for all of my classes. And then I walk up to the door of the first one and get told I'm in the wrong section, I should be in a later class, which conflicts with my next class and basically half my plan just fell apart in a rude awakening.

So I told myself, "Get used to disappointment." (Ooh, Princess Bride, I am full of quotes today!) Better than anger or denial or whatever, acceptance is best, right? And I am sure it's for the best ultimately- my schedule was too hard before.

Now I think I'll go eat lunch and make an even better schedule this evening. One setback does not a disaster make. A schedule with any other class can be as sweet. Happiness is where you look for it. I'll have a great semester regardless, I hope.

First or Sequel?

I'm heading back to the spring semester, so as I bid a fond farewell to winter vacation, I want to talk about first books vs. second books. (Ha, I wish I'd written even a first book. But as a reader, for now.)

I read Graceling, by Kristin Cashore, before it was quite so popular. I thought it was good, nice writing, good characters, nice plot, but it didn't really stand out for me. I was sort of surprised as it rose up the best seller list. And then I picked up Fire. Wow. The prose scintillates, the characters are so much more interesting and compelling than Katsa and Po ever were for me. I haven't actually finished it yet because I no longer had access to the copy of Fire I was reading but I am seriously impatient to get back to it.

There are other authors, though, who work the other way around. For example, Maria Snyder wrote Poison Study, which I loved. Yelena and Valek are the perfect characters (not in an annoying way either) and the setting of Ixia was well thought out and interesting. I totally love Valek and the Commander's conversations. And the evil is real (unlike some books where the villainy is contrived- not like that here). I was eager for the sequels- and while there was nothing wrong with them, they just didn't compel me to keep reading as the first had. I was in love with Poison Study from the first scene. (Snyder is publishing a new book soon, Inside Out, which is set in a completely different world and looks really good, and I hope I will like it as much as Poison Study.)

I loved Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle, but when I read the sequel Castle in the Air I was so impatient for some Howl/Sophie action to show up, that I couldn't appreciate the book in itself. If it was set in its own world, I'd have loved Flower and Abdullah for themselves. But now they paled next to my anticipation for the characters I knew and loved already. I guess she felt there wasn't enough of a story left to tell for Howl and Sophie. But is it better to have them as guest stars then not at all? (Although Christopher Chant, I'll take in any form. He's possibly my favorite character in all of fantasy.)

So why does it work that way? Why do some sequels work for the story and characters and have that magical combination of elements that make a book really excellent? (In Fire's case, pushing Graceling higher up on the bestseller list as well even though you don't need at all to read them together.) And others just fall flat or land in the shadow.

Speaking of shadow. I just read Ender's Shadow over break and loved it as much- but differently- as I'd loved Ender's Game. I like that he calls it a parallax, that name works well to describe its function. (Midnight Sun, anyone? I couldn't finish that, I tried it after SM posted it and it wasn't as good as the main books. But Midnight Sun isn't really a parallax proper, as it's not that different from Twilight itself.)I believe there are more books about Bean, right? Always wanted to find out what happens down on earth after Ender leaves. I read Game, Speaker, and Xenocide and I would love to read more of those too.

It would be great if every book you read was just as good in different ways. Failing that, we tend to go by author. Sometimes, this works, and sometimes, it doesn't. And sometimes you can be surprised. Maybe it's better that way.

In other news, I now have a twitter account. I begin with haiku but will go far from there. If I feel like it. I'm heatherlette if you want to find me.

Writer's Block- version 2.0

I have a new form of writer's block, and it's a doozy. It might not be new to the world, but I'm pretty sure it's new to me. I simply can't write more than a few pages of any one story without freezing up. I come up with a million and a half reasons and excuses of why I'm not ready to write just now, and go and read one of my endless forms of procrastination online.

This has resulted in a large number of files with stories just-begun, or nearly done but I somehow can't bring myself to finish them. I flit between one and the next like a hunter-shy bird, not able to stay longer than it takes to type a few words and then I come up with an idea for a new story, or I cast around for something to read in a book or online.

How do I get out of this pattern? How do other people do it? Usually I'm pretty good at concentrating on only one thing for a long period of time if it interests me. How can I get my stories to interest me again? One at a time, I mean.

So much for new year's resolutions, right?

Endings

A lot of my posts have been about politics, and I've decided I'd rather talk about something more fun- story.

I've been thinking about endings. It's very easy to talk about and analyze beginnings, but for endings you have to read the whole book first to really get them, so you'll end up with a lot of articles and discussion on opening sentences, the endings are a wee bit neglected. With exceptions, of course.

It just occured to me that this question is very fitting for the end of the calendar year. That wasn't why I was thinking about it, though.

So what is the purpose of an ending? Are you trying to satisfy readers or keep them wanting more? Tie up all the loose ends or introduce a surprise twist? There are many ways of writing a good ending, but what makes an ending good? And what should an ending be trying to accomplish?

When I used to write short stories in high school my teacher would ask me to fix the endings- she invariably would think that my ending was too abrupt and I left the reader hanging. I'd argue, but this is what the story needs! I wanted to leave some things ambiguous, let the reader be able to imagine variable endings. It's a fact that only established authors can get away with this, as in a tenth grader it looks like you just couldn't decide on the ending instead of an artistic choice, but I came to realize that a lot of times she was right and my ending did need something more, and there was usually a way to fill it out a bit without compromising my artistic deliberate ambiguity.

With novels it's harder, and the truth is, with all the novels I'm always trying to write, I have yet to reach an ending. I don't know what I will do when I get there- I have to think about what an ending is and what it should accomplish. It might depend on the book, true, but surely there's something all endings share. Does it vary so much between short stories and novels, do you think?

Now I just have to keep working long enough to write the middle...

Obama's Nobel Speech- Some Thoughts on War and Peace and Society

I wanted to do a full analysis of Obama's speech, the transcript of which I just finished reading. But I haven't the time to do it justice at the moment. So a just a few thoughts and impressions here.

I will say that I was impressed. By his opening, by who he chose to quote and acknowledge (not who you'd necessarily expect), and by the issues he brought up and discussed. I like how he acknowledges the need to struggle against evil even though we cannot win in our lifetimes, and I like the fact that he uses his brain when he talks and his ideas are well thought out and presented- on both moral/ethical and intellectual grounds.

I think there were some issues that he did not bring up, and could have, maybe should have. But he chose to stick with the obvious topics pretty much throughout- although it was bold to give specific examples of countries that fell short. Not so PC but nothing too offensive to anyone either.

I'd need to do a lot of thinking before I figured out myself exactly where I think he's right and where I disagree. As he's obviously put a lot more thought into the subject of war and peace than I have. (Maybe that's as it should be, maybe not.)

Not everyone will agree with everything he says. But I do think that there should be people in the society who think differently from the leader of the society when it comes to issues like this. Let the leaders take the stance that's best for the whole world overall, if someone must. In general, it should be the job of individuals, not a leader, to be wholly anti-war and stand up for the individual lives that are destroyed in fighting. Only if you have those voices raised up, and heard, can you have a leader who argues, like Obama is doing, that some wars do need to be fought as a matter of conscience (and he said it very well).

I think sometimes you need people around who remind you of all sides, the collective and the individual rights and welfare, who can help society find the right balance for each situation. Every country's job is to set up a system in which the right things in that balance can happen; where no one person's plan of action blocks consideration of any other option.

I do like how he cites people from JFK to Nixon to a pope. It's kind of fascinating, how he works-it's like how he made a staff out of his electionary opponents (Biden, Clinton) and admires Reagan as a president despite how different they all are.

Here's a sampling of which words he used most frequently- can be telling sometimes. I saw elsewhere on the internet that he used the word war double the number of times he used peace- but I don't think it was quite that drastic, he used peace a lot too, and one cannot entirely forget context (not taking into account if he said something like, no more war, for example). But for what it's worth, and because wordles are lots of fun, take a look.

Erasing Memory

At this appalling wee hour of the morning I came across the following on boingboing, which I haven't visited in quite some time and only stumbled across now after following the randomest of trails, true to the subtitle of this blog, but I will not enumerate the entire list of links explored now. Sometime I should track one of these trails of mine, though. What caught my attention was this:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/14/rewriting-fear-memor.html

Being able to rewrite the fear from a painful, emotional experience- selectively erasing bad memories. It might sound good to some- but to me, even if it works, without some terrible kind of side effect (and I imagine a side effect could be pretty bad) but still, I think it's a terrible idea, for all its shiny intriguiness. (new word there!) You're supposed to learn from bad experiences- to face your fears and overcome them! To grow as a person! The bad things were not meaningless, nothing in life is. Everything that happens to you is an oppurtunity to be used. Part of being human is facing experiences that scare you and push you out of your comfort zone.

If you can just erase all that by taking a pill or whatever then what was the point? What's the point of experiencing anything if you can just choose to erase it all afterwards? Will we start erasing all the bad decisions we make from our memories, so we literally have no regrets?

To me, this seems wrong. I wish they would think things through before trying ideas like this out on people. Progress for the sake of progress should not be the goal, and even when some advantages can be gained from it (helping people with severe PTSD from really horrible events no person should have to think about, I guess?) first you have to think about all the consequences, their implications, and the eventualities that stem from them. If not, humanity will suffer all the more.

The Smile Domino Effect

I walk down the main walk on my college's campus, and people look up, smile, wave if they know me. My aunt went to this college many years ago- and when I tried to tell her how people are so friendly here, she snorted in disbelief. "NO way. Not the same college as I went to." How did it change? Is it just the particular students in my year?

What gives a group its character? Who is the first person to smile at someone else, who then smiles at someone else, so on and so forth until everyone is actually nice to each other? If I had scowled at someone the first day, and that put them in a bad mood and they scowled at someone else...could that have broken the chain and now I would be living in a scowly, unfriendly enviroment? One of my own (unconcious) making?

How responsible are we for the enviroment we live in? And how much of it is out of our power?

Everyone knows, they say

Common knowledge is a complex thing. Defining it is difficult, and applying specific bits of information to belong to that definition, once you find one, is even harder. What can you assume people already know? Should you aim high or low? The pros and cons can be heavy stuff, for either.

If you assume a lot of knowledge on the part of your audience, you can cause people to learn by making them look things up. Or make them angry that you are being pretentious and arrogant, and throw down your writing in disgust.

And writing down, explaining things overmuch, might make sure that everyone understands, but is no better because then you're talking down to the rest who already know the information, or boring them. This comes up when you write a paper on a specialized subject, or just when you're talking to people you don't know well.

"Everyone knows science fiction is dying. Everyone knows science fiction is doing just fine, even thriving. Everyone knows the future of science fiction is in debate. Everyone knows the future of science fiction has shifted into YA while most people weren't paying attention."

You can find all of this as "everyone knows." See the problem?

And don't forget the dreaded "They say". English teachers hate to see it, don't they? Not just the teachers, though. You yell at your friend, "Who says? What's your source?" And in reply, you recieve only the nebulous "I don't know, everyone"- the ghostly archetype haunting the societal zeitgeist. Frustrating.

Mystery Post-it notes

Kristin Cashore wrote an article about writing. I will quote an excerpt here, hopefully with permission:

The house is strewn with post-it notes on which are written about a gazillion important reminders of things I must somehow remember to find a way to weave into the novel at some point, although, where, I can't imagine. Some of the post-it notes are written hastily in a code I have since forgotten. ("He is temperamentally sweet, but dangerous, like Jake." That would be very helpful, if I had the slightest idea to whom "he" refers, or if I knew anyone named Jake.)

My life, people. She hit it. I'm thinking about this and coming up with far too many examples.

• My white board that I can't use because it has notes on it full of useful ideas, but I can't erase even though I'm no longer sure what half of them are for, because I need them! My story might need them!
• My random post-its floating around helplessly.
• My notebooks full of random pages with snippets of plot and characterization- I frequently have to read through an entire notebook to make sure I'm not missing something crucial.
• Or something that the entire climax will build off of but is currently existing as a scrawl in the margin of my notes from English class.

Look, I don't have all my ideas sequentially. I don't plan to come up with ideas like this! Better randomly written down and possibly found when needed, rather than lost forever, right?

Right?

Reading Late at Night

I've been berating myself for years about staying up too late reading a book. I argue with myself- I'll feel awful and exhausted in the morning, I can always finish it tomorrow, no big deal, better to get work done if I'm going to stay up late anyway, etc. Sometimes it works and I go to sleep- more often it doesn't and I resort to coffee, if I'm lucky to wake up early enough to actually have time to drink some.

Last night I was up very late, reading one book I've read before and love, and finished it. Rather than going to sleep, I picked up a new book I hadn't read, one that I hadn't really been planning to read. I won't name it, but it is fast paced and somewhat melodramatic and in style reminds me oddly of Twilight, although they aren't really alike. I didn't finish it, luckily, because it was very late. But I got to the point in the book where most of the questions I'd been waiting to have answered were already resolved.

So I just put it down. Normally I feel a horrible guilt as I realize how late it's gotten, but this one night, I refused to look at the clock. I had a moment of happiness, then, as I turned off the light and crawled, blearily, under the covers. Like a sad, hollow feeling inside me had finally gone away. Just me, my book, a good solid story, and I'd made my own choice when to put it down and let my mind free into sleep. Don't know if it'll happen again. And I am still kind of tired today, but not in a bad way. But last night, I remembered in a different way why I love books.

Nano Woes

Nano on nano- nano a mano- moano o nano- NANO!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I am a wee bitty bit frustrated. My word count is beyond pathetic. And I really wanted to do Nanowrimo this year. I've done it before but I seem to be stuck, totally uninterested in continuing my story. It's not that excting, but once I start writing I know I'll get into it. But how do I make myself write when the page just isn't calling to me. Do I give up and try another month, or keep going, fall short of 50k and abandon the story and all hope to ye who enter here?

I guess I'll keep trying for now. But I'll see how it goes.

Autumn- favorite season?

On my way to the polls today, I noticed what a beautiful day it was. Despite the recent time-change so that it starts getting dark at an unearthly hour of the afternoon, its really a lovely season- I don't think I remembered how nice autumn can be. Or if I'd ever noticed before. I've never called it my favorite season, and I still don't think it is- but the air was clear and crisp and easy to breathe, chill enough for a cozy sweatshirt but not too cold. The sky was glowing with the light of the upcoming sunset, and the trees were a full range of yellows, with an occasional ruby or coppery orange, highlighted against a perfect blue sky.

Then I walked into a dingy little building to vote. Worthwhile, I hope, but the contrast was startling and hopefully not metaphoric.

So can I call autumn my new favorite season? Remains to be seen.

In a Balloon!

The boy who didn't fly away in a balloon- he's lucky, for now. He's alive, he's well, he's not in trouble with his parents who are just happy to see he's okay. But for the rest of his life, now that we live in the age of Google- unless he does something else spectacular when he's older that completely eclipses this- whenever he does anything, ever, this will haunt him. Friends searching for him to friend him on facebook. Future colleges. Employers. Dates... "Oh, you're the boy who hid in the attic when you were six while the entire state of Colorado was out looking for you in a balloon." Over, and over, and over.

This does not make for a happy life. He should change his name as soon as he's old enough to write it himself.

Um, Toto? I don't think we're in Colorado anymore...